List of recurring Orange Is the New Black characters

Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama series, created by Jenji Kohan and airing on Netflix. Set in the fictional Litchfield Correctional Facility, a women's Federal prison, it has featured a diverse ensemble of recurring or minor characters - including inmates, prison guards and staff, and non-prison characters. Many of these characters are expanded upon through a series of flashbacks told over the course of an episode, or over the course of the series. Many are subsequently upgraded to main characters as their roles are expanded and they feature more prominently in storylines.

Sophia Burset (played by Laverne Cox and M Lamar in flashbacks) – A trans woman, formerly a firefighter named Marcus, Sophia is in prison for credit card fraud, which she used to finance her gender confirmation surgery. Her wife at the time, Crystal, had been supportive of her transition and even helped her during her adjustment period, but her young son, Michael, had difficulty with her transition and ultimately turned her in to authorities.

In the prison, she works as a hairdresser and spends the first half of the first season railing against a reduction in her hormone dosage, which is stated to be over concerns about liver damage, but she is convinced it is discrimination (in fact, it is hinted at being due to Figueroa's embezzlement). She becomes a friend of Sister Jane, originally in an attempt to convince the nun to give her some of her hormones. Jane convinces her to try to reconcile with her son, and also to let Crystal move on.

Sophia is kind and understanding, albeit a little stubborn. Early on, she trades with Piper for a lock of hair, in return for some cocoa butter Piper needs to create her lotion for Red. They later develop an amicable relationship, often trading gifts or advice. She, like Piper, also seems to be more educated than many of her fellow inmates, being concerned about issues such as healthcare and benefits.

During the second season, she is shown being visited by her son in prison for the first time, and they are seen making amends. Sophia also develops friendships with Red, who goes to her for a makeover when she learns Vee has returned, and surprisingly, Tiffany, who has mellowed out considerably.

During the third season, Sophia agrees to allow Gloria's son ride with her son for weekly visits. The two start a friendship that results in her son acting out, causing Sophia to rescind her offer and cause a rift between Gloria and her that culminated into a violent confrontation. She later finds out that her son was the instigator of a violent attack of another child, but refuses to apologize to Gloria. Sophia ends up being attacked by other inmates in her beauty salon, during which the CO on duty runs away to fetch Caputo rather than intervening herself. Sophia tells Caputo that she is willing to bring a lawsuit against the prison if they don't take appropriate measures. When this is reported to MCC, they respond by throwing Sophia in the SHU claiming it is for her protection, when in reality she is being punished for her threat to sue.

In the fourth season, Sophia spends most of the season in the SHU, and makes numerous efforts to get Caputo's attention, such as flooding her cell, setting fires, and bashing her head against the walls of her cell, while Crystal, with Gloria's secret assistance, repeatedly confronted him at the prison and his house. Eventually, she is released from the SHU when Caputo uses Jane's smuggled phone to take a picture of her and leaks the picture to Danny Pearson.

Upon her release, she initially rebuffs Gloria's attempts to make amends, but eventually warms to her when she helps her fix her wig, which had been damaged in the previous season.

In season 5, she uses her basic medical training from her firefighting days to stitch CO Humphrey's gunshot wound, and spends most of the season helping the prison's only remaining medical personnel - one of the nurses - to care for the sick and injured inmates. Eventually, Sophia sneaks out of the prison with the intent to get sent to max to find Ingalls, but discovers that she has been released on compassionate grounds.

She returns, minus her wig, in Season 6 and lives in 'Florida', the neutral B block of Litchfield Max and rebuilds her friendship with Gloria Mendoza. Later on in the season, a recently resigned Joe Caputo tries to convince Sophia to pursue MCC in court in an effort to direct negative publicity towards MCC for the time she spent in solitary and potentially help Taystee's case. She initially agrees, but later changes her mind when MCC offer her a settlement agreement of $300,000 and early release. She is released alongside Piper Chapman at the end of the season.

Janae Watson (played by Vicky Jeudy) – A gifted former high school track star who was arrested after she became involved with a criminal boyfriend and was caught robbing a check-cashing establishment. She is one of the younger inmates. Flashbacks reveal that her downward spiral was mostly her own fault, as her boyfriend's superior, the local gang leader, had made numerous efforts to persuade her to stay out of the criminal life, and to take advantage of her track scholarship, including ejecting her from his parties. She is initially very rude and standoffish toward Piper and has problems with authority, confronting Miss Claudette and the prison guards. Janae is assigned to the tool crib in the electrical shop and loses a screwdriver on her first day. After refusing to be searched by a male prison guard, Janae is sent to the SHU by Caputo. She blames Piper for this since Piper lost the screwdriver that started the whole confrontation. Piper is able to make it up to her later by convincing the prison to reopen the running track so that Janae can run again. After getting out of SHU, Janae takes out her anger on Yoga Jones, who slaps her in the face after a confrontation when Janae mocks her about why she is in prison. However they later talk it out and are able to form a trusting relationship.

In the second season, she joins Vee's gang as she gets a cut of the cigarette money. She is sent down to SHU again after being caught with the cigarettes in her bunk. She is visibly affected by her second time in the SHU, and once again her relationship with Yoga Jones becomes strained when she rejects Yoga Jones' compassion. Later, she is convinced by Vee to pin Red's beating on Suzanne, but has a change of heart and attempts to recant her testimony along with Black Cindy.

During the third season, she is shown working on the lingerie detail with several of the other inmates. She is the only member of her group to object to allowing Brook to join their group after her suicide attempt. In flashbacks, it is shown that she was raised in an observant Muslim household. Upon receiving her track scholarship for college, her father forbade her from running track due to her uniform not being modest enough and going against their Muslim faith. In their subsequent argument, her hint that she would renounce Islam resulted in a slap from her father.

During the fourth season, she tries to help Black Cindy get a picture of Judy King to sell to the paparazzi. Later, the day after Poussey died, she punched Kasey in the face after she overhears her making a disrespectful remark about Poussey when her body is being removed from the prison.

At the end of the fourth season, she joins in the riot after Poussey's death.

During the fifth season, she stayed by Taystee's side while she was preparing to take the lead in negotiating to end the riot. When Taystee decided to force Judy to make a statement on behalf of the prisoners, she objected due to Judy being given special treatment during her sentence as a result of her wealth and fame. She was pleased when Taystee prevented Judy from giving the statement at the last minute and gave it herself, and cheered her on when she was negotiating with Figueroa. Later on, she is faced with the task of helping her friends deal with Suzanne, and was trying to help wake her up prior to the CERT (Correctional Emergency Response Team) officers breaking into the prison. She ended up being one of the first inmates detained, and is left unsure of the whereabouts of her friends when the prison buses are arriving and they aren't among the rest of the inmates.

Erica "Yoga" Jones (played by Constance Shulman) – An older Caucasian inmate who teaches yoga. She has an unusually calm, peaceful demeanor, completely out of place in the prison environment, and as such gives no indication about why she might be in prison. Her calmness shatters, however, when she has a fight with an angry Janae, who deduces that her commitment to spirituality and yoga stems from her having committed a particularly heinous crime, and cruelly suggests that she may have killed a child — leading to Jones snapping and hitting her across the face. Later, while the two are working in the rec room, Jones explains that while she was a marijuana farmer in California, she accidentally shot and killed an 8-year old child she mistook for a deer, and is therefore in prison for manslaughter. Watson realizes, as she had thought, that Jones is indeed using her yoga and commitment to spirituality to cope with the intense emotional pain and guilt that she feels as a result of her crime.

During the second season, she is seen participating in a hunger strike with Brook, to protest prison conditions. This is also her attempt to protest Janae having been thrown in the SHU, but her efforts are met with indifference by Janae herself, who coldly rebuffs her.

During the fourth season, she is selected to be Judy King's roommate after she gets a private cell. She frequently criticizes Judy's special treatment, while not completely abstaining from some of the benefits. When Aydin's remains are found, she ends up having a threesome with Judy and Luschek while high on Ecstasy. When she discovers that Judy is being released early due to Poussey's death, she tries to convince her to either refuse to leave in protest, or to inform the media of the circumstances of Poussey's death.

In Season 5, she along with Anita DeMarco and the remains of the White Power Group (Sankey, Helen, Brandy and Digori) tie Judy King up under the impression she will receive a food supply drop on the roof. A wooden board is tied to Judy's back and her peaceful façade is proven to be an act yet again. Eventually, Helen sells Judy as a slave to Black Cindy and eventually she leaves the prison. From then on, Yoga 'Erica' Jones plays a minimal part in the riot and is invited to Freida's bunker but eventually surrenders to the CERT teams along with Anita DeMarco, Norma Ramona and Gina Murphy.

As she was not part of the 'Litchfield 10', the group who stayed to face the CERT officers, or a key figure in starting the riot it is presumed she is transported to Ohio and thus is not present in Season 6

Brook Soso (played by Kimiko Glenn) – A younger inmate of Japanese and Scottish descent who first appeared in the second season, and landed in prison due to political activism. Chatty and somewhat ditzy, Brook attempts to befriend a non-reciprocating Piper, who had been kind to Brook on her first night in prison. Brook assumes that Piper wants to be friends due to her kind treatment, but finds out it was a ruse when she attempts to sell Brook out to Big Boo in order to get her blanket back. Later, Brook has sex with Nicky as part of Nicky's sex game with Big Boo, but manages to annoy her by constantly talking during the entire experience. Due to her initial refusal to shower, she annoys many of the inmates and is eventually ordered to be forcibly showered by Figeroa. In response to the prison's cruel treatment she attempts to stage a hunger strike, which inspires others to join her cause.

In the third season, she attempts to join a group led by Norma but is pushed away by Leanne, who then starts bullying her. Feeling that she was suffering from depression, Healy attempts to prescribe her antidepressants, but this is rebuffed by her new counselor Berdie Rogers. After Rogers is suspended, Healy refers her to a doctor to see if a prescription is necessary. During her evaluation, she steals a handful of pills — later discovered to be Benadryl — and attempts to overdose on them. Brook is saved by Poussey, Suzanne and Taystee, who look after her while she recovers, and subsequently take her into the African-American gang, with the approval of Black Cindy and the reluctant approval of Janae. Following her failed suicide attempt, she tells Healy that she feels that he is horrible at his job and that he just makes her feel worse whenever they talk.

In the fourth season, Brook starts dating Poussey, but their relationship gets off to a rocky start when she makes inadvertently racist assumptions about her (believing her to have been poor and the daughter of a crack addict). During a flashback, when she was participating in a door to door petition to prevent a Walmart from being built in her neighborhood, she made a bet with her ex-boyfriend to get a registered sex offender to sign her petition. After she discovered that the sex offender had to register because he was caught having sex on an empty public beach by another man recording the encounter, she told her ex-boyfriend that he was a child molester that harassed her during her visit to garner sympathy. Eventually, Brook and Poussey form a loving romance, but Poussey is killed during a scuffle in the prison cafeteria. The grieving Brook subsequently saves Suzanne's life after she pulls some bookcases on top of herself in the library.

In season 5, it becomes clear that her grief has caused Brook to lose her formerly upbeat, optimistic personality and become more reserved and cynical. Seeing this, Janae has a heart-to-heart with Brook, who admits that it is anger, rather than sadness that she feels at Poussey's death, and helps her channel her anger by taking her running and giving her boxing lessons. Their shared resentment and anger causes Brook and Taystee to clash, particularly over how Brook chooses to mourn Poussey, but they eventually make their peace over the new memorial library that Brook sets up in the prison corridors.

At the end of the season, Brook passively resists the CERT officers breaking up the riot by sitting in the middle of Poussey's memorial on her own, and refuses to move when ordered to. Eventually, she has to be physically picked up and carried out by two officers as she watches them destroy Poussey's memorial library. She is last seen boarding one of the buses transporting the prisoners away at the conclusion of the riot.

Gina Murphy (played by Abigail Savage) – A member of Red's crew in the prison kitchen, it is implied that she was incarcerated for murder and embezzlement. She is often seen with Norma Romano. When Red's scheme to sabotage Gloria backfires, Gina's arm is set on fire when an oven which Red had sabotaged explodes in flame.

During the second season, she is seen with shorter hair, several severe burn marks on the side of her neck, and a more sullen demeanor. She angrily rebuffs several of Red's attempts to win back her friendship, but eventually forgives her when Red finally realizes that she hasn't given her the one thing she was looking for, an apology. Later, she notices Nichols contemplating taking a hit of heroin that she got from Vee's gang, and harasses her about it for days, eventually pressuring her to take the heroin to Red.

She joins Norma's Cult in Season 3 and also escapes to the lake with all the inmates of Litchfield except Piper, Alex and Lolly.

She plays a minimal role in Season 4, however she helps Luschek prepare the new houses for the new guards. She is shown once again to be quite knowledgeable about household repair skills such as wiring, lighting and plubming. Later, she cuts herself by accident and Donuts takes her to medical.

In Season 5, she helps restore order to the riot by turning off the alarm but accidently turns all the lights off. She isn't seen much for the middle of the riot but is invited to Freida's bunker. Later, she witnessess C.O Piscatella torture Red and Alex and she records a video of it and posts it online. She (along with Norma) surrender at the end of the season to the guards.

She is transferred to Ohio and doesn't appear in Season 6. However the footage she filmed of Piscatella torturing Red later helps Piper avoid being charged with his murder.

Sister Jane Ingalls (played by Beth Fowler and Aubrey Sinn in flashbacks) – She is a former nun who is in prison for chaining herself in place at a nuclear facility during a protest, and she helps with services in the prison chapel. When Sophia finds out she is getting hormone pills, she tries to cozy up to her to obtain some. Instead, she tries to convince Sophia to reconnect with her son.

In line with her faith, Jane accepts Sophia as a close friend and strongly disliked Tiffany's religious fundamentalism during the first season. She is shown to be rather modernistic and "hip" in her faith and views, and can be very blunt and angry when she needs to be.

The second season reveals her past as a nun who first became an activist during the Vietnam War, but seemed more interested in her fame than doing genuine good works. It is revealed that she was dismissed from her order by the Catholic Church for her actions, but that she has neglected to tell any of the other inmates. After joining Brook's hunger strike, Jane gets carried away and takes over, cutting out Leanne and Angie, before being hospitalized. After the incident, a number of nuns gather at the prison and stage a sit-in while Caputo tries desperately to negotiate with Jane. She only relents after reaching an agreement with Red in the prison hospital—she would eat, but only if Red told the truth about the attack against her.

In the third season, she is one of the inmates that pretends to be Jewish in an effort to gain Kosher meals and was able to convince a rabbi who was screening the "Jewish" women for possible fakers that she was really Jewish, since her Christian teaching gave her enough knowledge of the Jewish faith to be able to persuade him.

During the fourth season, she devises a plan to get sent to the SHU in order to use a smuggled cell phone to take a picture of Sophia and smuggle it to the outside, eventually slapping Gloria in the cafeteria in front of a guard. On her way to the shower, the phone fell out of her vagina and Caputo reprimands her for possessing it, but then Caputo himself takes the picture and smuggles it out of the prison, resulting in Sophia's release from the SHU.

In season 5, when Sophia attempts to visit her by getting herself sent to max, it is revealed that Ingalls has been released on compassionate grounds.

Norma Romano (played by Annie Golden and Kristin Parker in flashbacks) – Norma is a member of Red's crew who refuses to speak due to insecurity, as she has a severe stutter (revealed in flashbacks). She works in the prison kitchen, and a flashback reveals that she was the first inmate Red interacted with upon her own arrival. She is often seen with Gina Murphy, as the two of them work in the kitchens together and cater to all of Red's needs.

In the first-season finale, Romano steals the show at the Christmas pageant, revealing a beautiful singing voice. After Red's attempt to sabotage Gloria hurts Gina, Norma expresses frustration and angrily storms away from Red, leaving her in tears. She and Red eventually reconcile, and she attempts to create arsenic to kill Vee after Red's beating. Gloria convinces her that it is a futile effort and that they should hex Vee instead.

During the third season, it is revealed that, in her younger days, she became one of the many wives of a hippie cult leader, warmed by his compassion and kindness to her — it was, in fact, he who suggested that she did not talk if she didn't want to. Years later, after all of the other wives had long since abandoned him, he had become bitter, twisted and verbally abusive. Eventually, he had berated her for staying with him for so long. In a surge of anger, she pushed him off of a cliff to his death. Back at the prison, she ends up being the focus of a cult inside of the prison. She eventually throws Leanne out of the cult after being confronted by Poussey over Brook's failed suicide attempt.

At the end of the third-season finale, Norma is the first inmate to run out of the prison yard towards the lake when the fence is taken down, which inspires all of the other inmates to follow her lead.

In the fourth season, she is once again at Red's side and plays a very minimal role although is still respected by some of her cult friends such as Leanne and Gina. At the end of the fourth season, she is seen singing to and consoling the grieving Brook Soso, following the death of her girlfriend, Poussey.

Once again she does very little in Season 5's riot although is invited to Freida's bunker but eventually surrenders to the CERT teams.

Leanne Taylor (played by Emma Myles) – An inmate who was often seen with Tiffany during the first season. She almost fanatically followed everything Tiffany says and was her groupie, or right-hand woman. She is also addicted to drugs and has been seen exchanging sexual favors with Mendez.

In the second season, she stands up against Tiffany and is shown to break off into her own character with her friends, leaving Tiffany by herself. She also was one of the inmates that joined Brook during her hunger strike and attempted to politely suggest that she needed to start bathing before Tiffany interrupted her by bluntly telling Brook that she stank.

During the third season, it is revealed that she was Amish and that she became addicted to drugs during her Rumspringa. After choosing to be baptized, she was arrested after a bag with her ID in it was found with drugs. She was convinced to go undercover for the police in exchange for immunity and later leaves her community after overhearing her father wondering what to do with her. Back at the prison, she joins, and eventually spearheads, a cult based on Norma being able to perform miracles. She soon reveals herself to be cruel, bigoted and mean-spirited, when she starts bullying and discriminating against Brook, who in turn attempts to commit suicide. After learning of this, Norma dismisses Leanne in anger, leaving her in the same position she left Tiffany — isolated and friendless.

During the fourth season, she is at the meeting Piper was holding to counter Maria's influence and was the first to misinterpret Piper's intentions by saying a racist remark about the Dominicans. After Poussey's death, she was drunk from the last of her hooch with Angie, and expressed all of the problems she believed were caused by Lolly's time machine, before the two proceeded to destroy it.

After the inmates take over the prison during the beginning of the fifth season, she steals a CO uniform along with Angie and is running around pulling down the pants of other inmates. When Angie gets possession of the gun Humphrey smuggled in, the two decided to take advantage and force the guards to do a talent show. During the show, Stratman does a striptease on her with only a sock covering his penis. Later, when confronting Tiffany, she discovers that Tiffany was hiding Coates from the other inmates, and ends up losing part of a finger when the gun goes off. She decides to try and get a replacement finger and decides to settle with Stratman's finger. Stratman offers to let her test it out first, and proceeds to finger her and brings her to orgasm, before he uses the opportunity to flee the prison. Angry at Tiffany for her finger, and unsatisfied with the inmate justice that was given to her, she joins Angie and bullies Tiffany until she ends up violating the terms of her inmate probation.

At the end of the season, when the CERT officers remove her from the prison, she sees her mother in the crowd surrounding the prison and shouts to her. She is transferred and does not appear in season 6.

Angie Rice (played by Julie Lake) – Leanne's best-friend, and another former follower of Tiffany.

During the second season, she was one of the inmates that joined Brook's hunger strike in an attempt to improve prison conditions.

During the third season, she starts believing that Norma is able to perform miracles after a stash of heroin Nicky hid in a light fixture in the laundry room fell out. After finding the drugs, she shares them with Leanne and finds herself getting threatened by Luschek if she says anything about them. Later, she joins Norma's cult and is accidentally released months early due to a mistake caused by MCC's new computer system and the incompetence of the new staff. Believing a miracle has occurred, Angie leaves, but the error is quickly spotted and a low-key search is conducted. Caputo finds Angie at the bus station. He sits and talks with her, and she apologizes for escaping, admitting that she has nowhere to go. Sympathetic, Caputo drives her back to the prison in his car, promising her that a short stint in SHU will be her only punishment.

During the fourth season, she starts smuggling drugs into the prison by swallowing the drugs while being kissed during visiting hours and defecating the drugs in the shower.

At the end of the season, while she is drunk on the last of Poussey's hooch, she decides to destroy Lolly's time machine after Leanne describes all of he harm that it has done.

During the fifth season, Angie steals a CO uniform and is running around pulling down the pants of other inmates. After they pull down Gloria's pants, the gun she took from Daya drops to the floor, and Angie takes possession of the gun. Following this, Angie and Leanne force the guards to perform a talent show. After finding Tiffany in the laundry room and eventually discovering that she was hiding Coates from the other inmates, she ends up watching Leanne get her finger shot off after Coates takes the gun. As a result, she ends up trying to help her get a replacement to her disfigured finger. Also, Angie and Leanne use the incident to get Tiffany tried by other inmates, only for them to continuously bully her until she breaks the "probation" the inmates gave her during her trial.

After the CERT team breaks up the riot, she is transferred to another prison, and does not appear in season 6.

Maritza Ramos (played by Diane Guerrero) – A Hispanic inmate. In contrast to her rougher, more hardened cellmates, Maritza is quite demure, and has a playful, sassy personality. She is often seen with Flaca, with whom she has a rivalry and close friendship; she is generally portrayed as somewhat more intelligent than her friend. On Valentine's Day, she and Flaca are having an intimate conversation in the kitchen, and when Flaca gives her a friendly peck on the lips, the two end up passionately kissing. They initially laugh in shock, before Flaca breaks down in tears, and Maritza consoles her, looking visibly shaken herself. She has a child on the outside.

In the third season, she is distraught when Flaca is accepted to another work detail, but reunites with her friend when she joins Piper's used panty business.

At the end of the season, she replaces Tiffany as the prison van driver after Tiffany faked a seizure to get away from Officer Coates.

In the fourth season, it is revealed that before her incarceration she was a small-time con artist who worked at an upscale nightclub, wherein she would fill empty bottles of expensive vodka with water, deliberately drop them and then panic about being fired in order to claim the price of the original drink from the people that she convinces had tripped her. One of her victims sees right through her and offers her in to his own, more elaborate confidence trick to steal expensive cars, which involved pretending to be a car saleswoman to entice middle aged men to go on a test drive, while simultaneously pretending to be their trophy wife to get the keys, and stealing the car once the drive was over. On her first attempt, a salesman gets in the car with them, and when both men grow suspicious, she improvised by pretending to be travel-sick, before getting into the car without them and driving off. Back in prison, when Maria starts a rival panty-smuggling business to Piper's, she uses Maritza to smuggle the panties out of the prison by hiding them in the wheel arches of the van and transferring them to Maria's cousin when she drops the COs off at their house. She also becomes friendly with McCullough, the CO who supervises her. When the COs spot the smuggler, she pretends he is a gardener and says "Follow me" in Spanish to him, not knowing that CO Humphrey can understand her. He reveals that he knows she's up to something, so she decides to draw the attention of the COs to her contact, threatening him into not returning. Humphrey overhears her talking with Flaca about whether she would rather eat ten dead houseflies or one live baby mouse, so during a later shift change, he takes her in his house, holds her at gunpoint, and forces her to partake in a real-life version of that choice. Maritza eventually chooses the live baby mouse, and later shares the horror of the experience to Flaca. After Poussey's death, her and Flaca overhear the white supremacist inmates discussing retaliation against Poussey's friends, following this, the two decide to practice how to react to the press if they are interviewed.

During the uprising at the end of the season, she sees Humphrey attempting to unholster a gun, and she pushes him to the ground before he can use it.

In season 5, Maritza and Flaca obtain smartphones, and begin to use them to film vlog posts detailing their makeup regime within the confines of the prison system, something that gradually earns them a following on YouTube which, by the time the riot comes to an end, has become big enough that many of their fans have crowded outside the prison to wave banners in support and in the hope of seeing them when the riot breaks up. As the CERT officers storm the prison, Maritza and Flaca film their last video, and refuse to co-operate with the officers. One of them fires a pepper bullet and blinds Maritza just long enough to restrain her.

Outside, as the inmates are being loaded onto their buses, Maritza is stopped from getting on Flaca's bus, which is going to Max, and instead sent on the bus going to Ohio. Distraught at being separated from her friend, she shouts to her that she loves her.

Maritza does not appear in season 6, though Flaca at one point goes into a tearful rant on her radio show about how much she misses her friend.

Stella Carlin (played by Ruby Rose) — A young Australian inmate introduced in the third season, assigned to the prison's new garment factory with Piper.

She is the hidden true main antagonist of season 3. Strikingly beautiful, androgynous and intelligent, but also somewhat mysterious, she takes an immediate shine to Piper, and the two become fast friends. Stella is the first to volunteer for Piper's new used panty business and provides her with additional support in its management, all the while openly flirting with her. As Piper and Alex's relationship starts to suffer due to Alex's paranoia and Piper's darker personality, she and Stella become closer, and eventually kiss, although Stella continues to maintain a respectful distance at Piper's request, to spare Alex's feelings. Later, when Piper and Alex decide to break up, she asks Stella to become her partner (both professionally and personally), despite the fact that Stella's release date is imminent. Shortly before Stella is released, however, she steals all of the money Piper has made from the business. Piper quickly deduces (based on the fact that only three people knew where the phone she used to transfer the money was kept) that it was Stella, and confronts her. Stella begs for forgiveness, justifying herself by the fact that her family are all back in Australia, she has no money left, and that she will have no place to go upon her release. Piper at first appears to forgive her, and states that she can keep the money. Shortly afterwards, Piper turns up at Stella's cubicle and gives her a kiss goodbye, which confuses Stella, as she still has a couple of days left. At that moment, the COs arrive and search her bunk, discovering some contraband items that Piper had planted. As Stella is removed with the possibility of facing an extended sentence in maximum security, Piper gives her a final, cold smile, showing her the "Trust No Bitch" tattoo that Stella herself had given her.

In season 4, she is briefly seen in Max, with Nicky. In their brief interaction, it is shown that they are engaging in physical intimacy, although Nicky promptly dumps Stella when she takes delivery of heroin from a guard, revealing that Stella is a drug addict.

Stella does not appear in season 6, when many of the Litchfield inmates are sent to Max, but inmate Madison Murphy reveals to Piper that, out of vengeance, she had revealed to her the full story of Piper's panty-smuggling ring, which she uses to threaten her.

Anita Demarco (played by Lin Tucci) – An older inmate who was one of the first to befriend Piper. Piper learns that when DeMarco first arrived in prison many years earlier, she had a heart attack, and now sleeps with a face mask and CPAP machine. DeMarco was a constant roommate of Miss Rosa, and seems to have a steady stream of newbies who stay in her room until the newbies are assigned permanent bunks.

Maureen Kukudio (played by Emily Althaus) – A younger inmate introduced in the third season, Maureen becomes an obsessive fan of Suzanne's new erotica series, which she began writing in the drama class they both attended. She perpetually irritates Suzanne by offering her ideas for her upcoming chapters and writing her own fan-fiction. As time progresses, however, it becomes clear that Maureen is romantically interested in Suzanne, who becomes nervous, as she has never actually had a girlfriend or any sexual experience — she writes her erotica almost entirely from imagination. She backs out of a sexual liaison with Maureen in one of the storage closets, due to her apprehension and lack of sexual experience, but the two continue to flirt, and they are brought closer in the final scene, when Suzanne retrieves a terrapin that Maureen threw away after it bit her foot.

At the beginning of the fourth season, she attempts to get closer to Suzanne, but Suzanne turns her away after she discovers her to be quite a strange person. She decides to stay in the woods and is discovered hiding in one of the houses by Caputo later that night. Although her offence is unknown, when Caputo read her file he is visibly shocked and horrified and other inamtes also imply she did something bad. It is speculated that it might be a murder or pedophilia, (due to her attraction to Suzanne) however she says that she 'never hurt anyone'

Later on during the season, she appears to reconcile with Suzanne and meets her in the cleaning closet. As revenge for leaving her in the woods, Maureen sexually stimulates Suzanne in the closet, but intentionally leaves her unsatisfied. During the lockdown after Aydin's remains were found, she volunteers to fight Suzanne and after repeatedly taunting Suzanne, she is brutally beaten and is sent to medical, with the right side of her face badly bruised and her right eye swollen shut. Nevertheless, she is visibly glad to see that Suzanne is moved into the bed next to her.

In season 5, when CO Humphrey is brought into the facility and put between the two, Maureen attempts to impress Suzanne by blowing oxygen bubbles into Humphrey's IV tube, which causes an air embolism, and in turn causes him to have a stroke, which ultimately kills him. Later on, Suzanne takes Maureen out of bed and helps her to the cafeteria to join the other rioters, and the two organise a seance at the sight of Poussey's death. At the end of the season, when Suzanne is starting to have a meltdown owing to not taking her medication, she finds Maureen almost unconscious in the bathroom, her condition having deteriorated due to an infection and the lack of medical attention, and takes her back to her bed in medical. When CERT storms the prison, she physically lashes out at the officers who have come to empty the medical centre, and is roughly pulled from her bed in retaliation.

Alex later reveals to Piper that Maureen later died at the hospital sometime after the riot, presumably of sepsis as a result of her untreated wounds.

In the first and second seasons, she is shown to be somewhat ill-tempered and antisocial, though widely accepted.

In the third season, her secretive everyday routine and murky past is revealed. Chang emigrated to the U.S. from Hubei province in the early eighties with the intention of marrying a businessman. However, he rejects her upon seeing her, mostly because of her skin disorder. To pay off her debts, Chang worked in a Chinese herbal medicinal shop for her brother. Stating that he has no better use for her and that she is practically invisible, Chang's brother sends her out to accompany the gang members who purchase and distribute illegal medicines to shops like theirs. During a transaction with a Korean smuggler, Chang revealed herself to be sharper and more ruthless than she let on when she discovered that the products were fake, prompting the smuggler to attack the gangster who had accompanied her. She saves the gangster's life by knocking out the smuggler with a tire iron, and he promises to repay her. She has the gangster and his associates bring her the businessman who spurned her. During the confrontation, the businessman curses and spits at her, prompting her to order the gangsters to cut out his gallbladder as she leaves. In prison, she maintains a set of rituals which confuse the other inmates and makes her own food using what she can smuggle out of the canteen and obtain from commissary. She spends her afternoons watching Chinese TV shows on a smartphone she keeps hidden in one of the prison sheds and keeps a bag of tangerines hidden in the long grass near the prison fence. Despite her solitary behavior, she appears to enjoy observing the other inmates around her.

At the beginning of the fourth season, she declines to go to the lake with most of the other prisoners, and instead uses the incident as an opportunity to take a private shower.

In the fifth season, as the riot is going on, she escapes through the hole in the fence made by another inmate in a failed escape attempt. However, in the sixth season it is revealed that she was eventually caught, and transferred to another prison.

Jimmy Cavanaugh (played by Patricia Squire) – One of the "Golden Girls", Jimmy is an elderly woman with severe dementia or Alzheimer's. She wanders out of the prison and is seen at a bar by Caputo, whereupon she is returned to the prison. Later, she jumps off the raised stage in the chapel, thinking she is jumping into a swimming pool, and breaks her arm. The prison system decides that her care is too expensive and grants her a "compassionate release", which amounts to their dropping her off at a bus stop to be left to her own devices, completely senile and incapable of caring for herself.

Lolly Whitehill (played by Lori Petty and Christina Brucato in flashbacks) – Lolly is first seen on the plane that is taking Piper to Chicago in the beginning of the second season. While in Chicago, she is attacked in the prison yard after getting in a confrontation with another prisoner.

During the third season, she is transferred to Litchfield and starts a trend of inmates requesting kosher meals. She seemed to have an obsession with Alex and is seen keeping notes of her daily routine. During a work detail, she breaks a window and keeps a piece of glass from the window. She is confronted by Alex in the bathroom and attempts to use the glass shard to defend herself before being overpowered and nearly strangled by Alex in a panic. During their struggle, Lolly claims that she is being framed for treason by the NSA and that the prison is bugged, and is revealed to be paranoid and delusional.

At the beginning of the fourth season, she finds Aydin attempting to choke Alex to death in the prison greenhouse, and pushes him off of her and knocks him unconscious. The following day, she helps Alex and Frieda chop up his body and bury it in the garden. She becomes extremely paranoid and believes that Aydin was a government agent, later believing that a drone she sees flying over the prison is the government targeting her in retaliation for killing him (in reality, the drone was the paparazzi taking pictures of Judy behind bars). Flashbacks to her time before prison show her as a young reporter. While young Lolly was gifted and enthusiastic, she frequently pestered her boss with allegations that various local businesses were involved in high-level schemes, which clashed with her low-level community news assignments. Her paranoia began early in her professional life, which caused her to distrust and unnerve her boss. It is also shown that she began hearing voices in her head. Eventually, she was fired from her job and offloaded from her family, who attempted to move her into a halfway house. Terrified and paranoid of her new surroundings, Lolly runs away, eventually becoming homeless, where she functions as a generally good-natured, but highly paranoid person. She is arrested after threatening two police officers that asked her to leave the area. She is taken under Healy's wing and confesses that she killed Aydin to him, but her confession is dismissed as a delusion. Healy was able to convince her that Aydin's death was a delusion, before putting her on a treatment plan. She tries to build a time machine, which other inmates used as a makeout area. After Aydin's remains are found, Healy gets her sent to psych.

Judy King (played by Blair Brown) — A TV personality with a culinary show, her character is loosely based on Martha Stewart and Paula Deen.[1][2][3] Judy was shown throughout the third season on trial for tax evasion and was eventually convicted of the charges. Originally opting to go to an alternative prison, she decides to spend her time in prison at Litchfield.

At the end of the third season, she is shown reporting for her sentence, but she becomes upset after she finds the reception room empty due to most of the guards going on strike prior to her arrival.

At the beginning of the fourth season, she turns herself in to Luschek in the prison mailroom and starts a friendship with him. Due to her celebrity status, Caputo starts giving her special treatment under orders from MCC, to include giving her a private room and looking the other way when she possessed contraband. Charming, charismatic and generally quite friendly, Judy quickly manages to make friends amongst the other inmates despite the special treatment she receives. Against her wishes, Healy decides to make her teach a cooking class, and she used Poussey as an assistant. Impressed with Poussey, she gave her contact information so she can seek a job with her company after she got out. While in prison, a racist puppet show she did in the 80s was leaked onto the internet, and as a result, she believes that the black inmates are planning to jump her in retaliation. She later finds out that they were just trying to get a picture of her to sell to the paparazzi. Deciding to go along with it, she takes a picture of herself kissing Black Cindy, and then pretends to be in a relationship with her. After learning about Luschek's guilt for getting Nicky sent to max, she uses her money and influence to get Nicky returned to minimum security and demands that Luschek has sex with her for her trouble. When the prison was put on lockdown after Aydin's remains were found, she gets Yoga Jones, Luschek, and herself high on Ecstasy and has a threesome with them.

At the end of the season, MCC decides to release her early due to Poussey's death, and backdate her release so it would appear she was already gone when Poussey died. Before she could get out of the prison, she was caught in the uprising that started after Taystee informed the other prisoners that Bayley wasn't being arrested for Poussey's death.

During the fifth season, when her attempt to get out of the prison fails, she attempts to hide from the other inmates only to end up being captured by the white supremacist inmates. Taystee and her crew end up negotiating to get possession of Judy, so they can use her to release a statement to the press, and prior to giving the statement Black Cindy took advantage and used her for slave labor. Before Judy can give the prepared statement, she is interrupted by Taystee, who ends up completing the statement and releasing her. Following her release, Judy appears on a primetime news show with Aleida and reveals her experiences behind bars, before revealing that Daya shot Humphrey at the beginning of the riot, although not mentioning either one by name. After Judy described the shooter to Aleida, she immediately knew that Judy was talking about her daughter.

Kohan had personally asked Brown if she could be on OITNB. One consideration was that Brown, raised by her Southern mother, was able to use a Southern accent.[4]

Alison Abdullah (played by Amanda Stephen) — An African-American inmate and observant Muslim who becomes one of Black Cindy's new roommates. The two quickly clash over their shared space in the bunk, which escalates into a turf war, all the while trading barbs over their respective religions, which leads Cindy to give her the nickname "Jihad". They eventually overcame their differences, due to their mutual hatred of Scientology, and formed a truce in an attempt to take a picture of Judy to sell to the paparazzi with her smuggled cell phone she hides in her hijab. She was previously shown texting her child, Farah, on the phone.

At the end of the fourth season, while the black inmates are grieving Poussey's death, she lowers her hijab and reveals her hair (shown to be bright red), which brings some comic relief for her friends.

During the fifth season, she joins her friends during the riot, and when Taystee is made the spokeswoman for the demands to end the riot, she helps take the tally to prepare it for the negotiators. Flashbacks reveal that she was married, and her husband Hassan eventually found another woman to take as his second wife. Over time, she would become upset when her husband's second wife Sahar would spend more time with Hassan and she would have less say in how Farah was raised. As the riot continued, she eventually takes off her prison uniform and puts on a CO's uniform. Along with Cindy, she stops Suzanne from pushing Humphrey in a wheelchair to Taystee, which would have endangered negotiations.

At the end of the season, after the CERT officers breach the prison, she removes her hijab before leaving the prison. She is concerned about her friends as the buses pull up to take the inmates away. It is unclear which prison she was transferred to, but she does not appear in season 6.

Kasey Sankey (played by Kelly Karbacz) — A new inmate with white supremacist leanings (although she insists on being called a "white nationalist," and resents being called a neo-Nazi, insisting that there is a difference between the two) who arrives at the prison at the beginning of season 4, along with two skinhead friends of hers; Brandy Epps and Helen "Skinhead Helen" van Maele. Kasey immediately antagonizes the non-white inmates, first causing trouble when she leads her friends in an attack on Blanca following an argument over the TV. Following this, Kasey is jumped by a group of Blanca's friends, consisting of Maria, Ramona and Ouija. Later, when Piper was attempting to start a watch group to counteract Maria's takeover of the prison, she misinterpreted Piper's intentions as a desire to start a white supremacist group, and started a "white lives matter" chant with the other inmates in the room. During a gang activity meeting led by Officer Dixon, she told him about the used panty business, which eventually resulted in both Piper and Maria's businesses being shut down. After Aydin's remains are found, she is taken to the visitor area to await further interrogation. The guard monitoring the group, Officer Humphrey, plays a cruel prank on her by pulling her chair out from under her. She is laughed at by most of the inmates in the room, but when Humphrey tries to instigate a fight between her and Suzanne, she declines, and watches in obvious dismay as Suzanne becomes unhinged and violently beats Maureen to within an inch of her life. Disgusted by the incident, Kasey and some of the other white supremacists approach Suzanne's friends in the African-American group, and later Maria's gang, to enlist them in going after Humphrey, admitting that her hatred of him far outweighs her racist beliefs. She is hit in the face by Janae after she makes an insensitive remark while Poussey's body is being removed from the prison.

At the end of the season, she is at the front of the crowd of white inmates in the riot, and loudly tries to encourage Daya to shoot Humphrey.

In season 5, Kasey's gang are taken captive and locked in the pantry with Frieda by CO's Stratman and Blake, but eventually break out with Frieda's ingenuity. They then take Judy King hostage with Yoga Jones and Anita DeMarco, and attempt to ransom her for a supply drop from what turns out to be a media helicopter; Kasey does not join her friends owing to her shocking discovery that her boyfriend on the outside is forming a relationship with a friend of hers.

As the season progresses, Kasey's gang form an unlikely bond with Ouija and Pidge, Maria Ruiz's two henchwomen, which grows when they set up a coffee parlour together (Brandy recounts that she was featured in a Barista-themed magazine for her coffee-making brilliance, before noting that she ended up in the prison because she combined her professional and racial beliefs and got arrested for poisoning several customers who were Jewish or black), and when Maria abandons her gang. When the CERT officers storm the prison at the end of the riot, Kasey's gang ultimately invite the two to join them in fighting them off. The five then barricade themselves inside a dorm room and, between them, manage to take down several officers before being restrained.

She and Brandy do not appear in season 6, but Skinhead Helen appears at the prison in Ohio, suggesting that all three were sent there together.

Stephanie Hapakuka (Jolene Purdy) — A Hawaiian inmate who becomes Piper's new bunk mate in the fourth season. Due to her somewhat imposing demeanour, Piper hires her as "muscle", although she is actually quite peaceable and non-violent. She takes an immediate dislike to Piper, considering her to be inauthentic and self-centred, and later lures her into a trap set up by the Dominicans.

Purdy, who in real life is often questioned about her ethnicity, stated that portraying Hapakuka "has been so great for me" as the character is "the closest to my own ethnicity that I've ever played" and that Hapakuka herself is, like Purdy, questioned about her ethnicity.[5]

Ramona "Pidge" Contreras (played by Miriam Morales) - A Hispanic inmate who is amongst the new clutch of inmates that arrive at the prison at the start of season 4. She is usually seen with her friend, Ouija.

Early on in the season, she, Ouija and Blanca get into a dispute with inmate Kasey Sankey over watching a scoreless FIFA world cup qualifier rather than a travel documentary. This results in Blanca being attacked. Under Maria Ruiz's leadership, Ramona and some other inmates violently beat Kasey in Sophia's old salon. They then form a gang consisting of the new contingent of Dominican Americans that has arrived at the prison. Later, Maria tries to persuade Piper to take on both Ramona and Ouija as employees for her used panty business, which only leads to an explosive fight between them. Ramona, who had previously been told that Piper was the "boss" of the prison, warns her that Maria's comments that she was getting too big for her boots were a threat. Later, the group make good on their threat when they take Piper by surprise, drag her into the kitchen and brand her with a swastika.

In season 5, while rounding up the guards and other hostages with Ouija during the prison riot, Ramona steals Linda's high-heels, and spends most of the season guarding the hostages. She also joins Ouija and the white supremacists in setting up a coffee shop in the rec room, which proves a hit with the inmates - until the coffee runs out.

Towards the end of the season, she and Ouija start to suffer from the lack of sleep and sustenance and take to snorting coffee granules like cocaine, which initially has the desired effect, but eventually causes her severe vomiting spells. When the CERT officers breach the front doors of the prison, Ramona and Ouija initially plan to fend them off in the library, but instead end up joining the white supremacists in barricading themselves in one of the dorms, which is booby trapped. The five of them manage to injure a large number of CERT officers before they are restrained and marched outside to join the other prisoners.

She does not appear in season 6, but it is presumed she was transferred to Ohio with Ouija.

Carmen "Ouija" Aziza (played by Rosal Colon) - A Hispanic inmate who enters the prison at the start of season 4. She is usually accompanied by Ramona, who arrived at the prison with her, and the two appear to be close friends. She has three teardrop tattoos under her left eye, which she claims is to indicate that she has killed three people (contemptuously remarking that she is in prison for WIC fraud). Upon her arrival in the prison, Ouija immediately chats up Flaca, upon noticing the teardrop under her own eye, which she is disappointed to learn is just makeup, and questions her about the balance of power amongst the inmates. Later, following an argument with Kasey Sankey, Ouija joins Maria Ruiz's new gang, and later offers her services to Piper's business at Maria's suggestion, which is rebuffed. Upon the discovery of Aydin's body, she is among those separated from the other inmates for further questioning. Upon witnessing Suzanne beat Maureen Kukudio almost to death, Ouija helps Maria drag Suzanne off.

In season 5, she joins Ramona in guard duty over the hostages, and later helps set up a coffee parlour with the white supremacists, where Ouija reveals herself to be a very talented impressionist, impressing the other inmates with her dead-on impressions of the inmates and guards. When the long period of time with no sleep and sustenance starts to take its toll on her, Ouija joins Ramona in snorting coffee, which ultimately causes her diarrhoea.

At the end of the season, she joins Ramona and the white supremacists in fighting off the CERT officers.

Ouija briefly appears in season 6, alongside Big Boo, laughing knowingly as Linda Ferguson's hair is shaved off, moments before a guard comes to tell her she is free.

Domiga "Daddy" Duarte (Vicci Martinez) is an inmate in Max, who is introduced in series six. Her nickname comes from both her androgynous appearance, and the fact that she previously worked as the manager of a high end prostitution service. Flashbacks reveal that she had a close relationship with several of the girls that worked for her, and that at least one was killed by a client. In the present, she is the right hand woman of Barbara "Barb" Denning, the leader of the D Block gang, and manages the day to day operations of the gang due to Barb's drug addiction. She takes an immediate shine to Dayanara "Daya" Diaz when she first arrives at Max after pleading guilty to killing CO Humphrey and receiving a life sentence, and makes numerous attempts to befriend her. This includes giving her oxycodone to help her manage the pain from the constant beatings and assaults that she receives from the guards, which results in Daya developing an opioid addiction. However, Daddy later suffers a setback when she floods the prison's cheese packaging facility with rats to land D Block preferable job assignments, unaware that the supply line for Barb's drug smuggling operation relies on it. The manufacturer consequently pulls its contract with the prison, cutting off the supply line, and all of the addicts on D Block, including Daya, start to go into withdrawal. Barb orders her to create a new supply line, but she soon runs out of ideas, and ends up making the situation even worse when Daya works out where Barb's personal stash of oxy is kept, and takes it away. Despite her anger, Daddy ends up reciprocating when Daya kisses her to placate her. Daya eventually helps her by convincing her mother, Aleida to hide heroin baggies in the false bottoms of the chocolate protein shake bottles that her new boyfriend, Captain of the Guards Rick Hopper brings into work each day. Eventually, Daya confesses to Daddy that she has feelings for her, and the two begin a relationship. When Carol and Barb plan a major fight during the prison kickball tournament that Piper organised, Daddy joins the team on the field with the intent to signal when it is time to attack. However, like every other person on the field except for Madison Murphy, Daddy gets caught up in the game, and ultimately doesn't give the signal.

LorettaFisher (played by Cristina J. Huie) – Leanne's friend, and another former follower of Tiffany.

German "Weeping Woman" (played by Tamara Torres) – This unnamed inmate is frequently seen in the background while Piper is on the phone. During the third season, she becomes a part of the cult that follows Norma.

Jeanie "Babs" Babson (played by Danielle Herbert) — An African-American inmate who is a member of Norma's cult.

Ginsberg (played by Jamie Denbo) — A Jewish inmate who helps Black Cindy convert to Judaism after talking to her and realizing that Cindy sincerely wants to join her faith.

Adeola (played by Sipiwe Moyo) — A Nigerian inmate in Max who shares a cell with Lorna, where she raises rats. She is known for her quirky personality and sense of humour.

Rhea Boyle (played by Yelena Shmulenson) – A Jewish inmate who is used by Black Cindy to convert to Judaisim. Boyle is shown to be rather monotonous and blunt, and only shows small personality when talking about her child, a 5 year old. Boyle then also educates Leanne Taylor and Angie Rice on dinosaurs while waiting in line at the pharmacy.

Patricia "Tricia" Miller (played by Madeline Brewer) – An inmate who grew up on the streets and one of the youngest inmates. She is a drug addict and lesbian who sports a tattoo on her throat and cornrows. While outside prison, Tricia showed kleptomaniac tendencies, often taking things that she promised herself she would later pay for, reasoning she would not be a thief if she did so. She kept a list of all the things she ever stole with the intention of settling all her debts when she had the money. She is caught by Miss Claudette attempting to plant drugs in her girlfriend Mercy's bunk so she would get more time, but ultimately backs down and lets her girlfriend get released. She asks Piper to help her in writing her letter of appeal so that she can get out faster and be with Mercy, although she has not been able to contact her. Tricia gets drugs from the prison guard Mendez in exchange for sexual favors. When he is late with his deliveries, she goes into drug withdrawal and is taken to the SHU. Due to Red's intolerance for drugs and it being her "second offense", Tricia is ejected from Red's "family". Red later admits that she had only intended Tricia's ejection to be temporary, and to force her to learn her lesson. Mendez tries to blackmail her into selling drugs for him again, though she tells him she wants to be clean again. Later, Mendez notices that she is in a drugged out state, and realizing that she has helped herself to some of his stash, and that this might reveal the presence of drugs in the prison, he quickly hides her in an empty broom cupboard. After discovering she was specifically requested for a Scared Straight visit with delinquent kids, he returns to get her, and discovers that she is dead, revealing that she had in fact taken the entire bag — most likely in a final act of sacrifice to protect Red and her family. In a panic, he manipulates the situation to make it look like a suicide by hanging. A grieving Red blames herself for driving Tricia away. The truth of her death is never discovered by the administration, although Nicky quickly deduces what happened and tells Red.

Mercy Valduto (played by Katie Iacona) – Tricia Miller's girlfriend and Big Boo's ex-girlfriend. During the week of her release she antagonized Big Boo, but they still departed on good terms. Tricia was prepared to plant drugs on Mercy to extend her sentence so they could stay together, but Miss Claudette talked Tricia out of it, determined not to let her screw up Mercy's life. Mercy leaves the prison intending to stay out of trouble and stay in contact with Tricia. Tricia later reveals she has lost contact with Mercy, but remains optimistic.

Yvonne "Vee" Parker (played by Lorraine Toussaint) – The main antagonist of the second season. Described as a street-tough inmate who used to run a drug business, using kids as runners, she returns to jail after a long stint outside. She has a long history with many of the inmates, particularly Red, whom she had had beaten ruthlessly when attempting to take over her smuggling business, and Taystee, whom she had taken under her wing from an early age. Vee is ruthless, manipulative and something of a sociopath, more than willing to take on any naive young inmate or criminal and drop them when they are no longer of use to her. Upon returning to prison, she builds up a gang among the black population, many of whom are manipulated by her charming and maternal influence, with the exception of Poussey, who is one of the only inmates with the courage to take her on. She then forms a tobacco operation, and after Red rejects her attempted takeover of her smuggling operation and one of her friends attempts to kill her, begins a gang war with the Caucasian gang. Red almost succeeds in killing her by strangling, but she relents at the last minute and decides to call a truce. However, Vee was only pretending to give up, and instead violently beats Red with a slock (a lock in a sock), sending her to the prison infirmary. Her arrogance and ruthlessness ultimately leads to her downfall when Nichols, Red's second-in-command, steals her supply of heroin, causing her to become paranoid. Her attempt to frame Suzanne for Red's beating causes all of her girls to turn on her, and she manages to escape through Red's supply tunnel. When Vee reaches the main road, Miss Rosa, who has just hijacked a prison van, sees her at the side of the road and, remembering an earlier incident with her, deliberately veers off the road and runs her over, killing her.

In the second-season episode "Appropriately Sized Pots", flashbacks reveal that as a young woman, Rosa was part of a ring of professional bank robbers. After making clean getaways from three successive heists, she made the mistake of impulsively robbing a fourth bank at random which ultimately sent her to prison. The flashbacks also reveal that most of the men she's loved died moments after she kissed them when a job has been successful, which has led her to believe she is cursed.

Throughout the second season, she routinely goes to the nearby hospital for chemotherapy, and befriends a teenager who is also on chemo. Eventually, she is told that her cancer is aggressive, and she has between three and six weeks left to live. When they return to the prison, they discover the place is on lockdown. As Officer Ford goes to investigate, Lorna decides to give Rosa the opportunity to steal the prison van and escape, urging her not to die in prison. As she drives away, Rosa sees the escaped Vee at the side of the road and runs her over in revenge for having treated her so rudely.

In the opening of the third season, a CO reveals that, after running Vee down, Rosa committed suicide by driving into a nearby quarry. She appears in a flashback of Caputo's first day working in the prison and is one of the first inmates that he talks to.

Irma, and Taslitz (played by Yvette Freeman and Judith Roberts) – "The Golden Girls" are a group of seniors in the prison who befriend Red. They help Red set up the greenhouse and help to grow the plants and with Red's smuggling. Despite appearing to be harmless old ladies, they are actually quite dangerous and hardened — unlike the other inmates, they possess and carry shivs. In one scene, when tasked with taking back Red's merchandise from the kitchen, they calmly threaten Gloria's staff with these weapons. Later, when Red abandons the greenhouse, they feel it's because of Vee, so they plot to kill her. Taslitz volunteers to do the job, and tails a woman she thinks is Vee as she leaves the showers. Upon reaching an empty corridor, she brutally shanks the woman, but it turns out to be the wrong person. Taslitz is sent to the SHU, and Vee takes it as a declaration of war. She is later seen in max.

Charlie "Donuts" Coates (played by James McMenamin) – One of the new correctional officers hired after MCC lowers the prison's employment standards. Previously working at a donuts store frequented by O'Neill and Bell, he comes to the prison and becomes friends with Tiffany after being introduced to her for a van errand. During one of their errands, he takes her out to feed ducks and ends up treating her like a dog before kissing her against a tree. He stops kissing her after it is apparent she isn't into it and that it was crossing some boundaries. During another van errand, Coates is late returning to the prison and misses count, causing him to be reprimanded by Caputo and put on probation. Tiffany apologizes for making him late, but he throws her into the prison van and rapes her while repeatedly stating that he loves her. Later, he wakes up in the laundry room, after (unknown to him) being drugged by Tiffany and Big Boo. During another van errand, he tells Tiffany to drive under an underpass (presumably to rape her again), but she fakes a seizure and runs off of the road. Tiffany is relieved of her van duties and Coates meets Maritza, who will be Tiffany's replacement as the van driver.

During the fourth season, he becomes fed up of Tiffany's cold, hostile attitude towards him, he confronts her over what her issue with him is. She asks him whether he is having sex with Maritza, and thinking that she is jealous, assures her that Maritza isn't his type. Tiffany responds by saying that she is making sure he is not raping her. Coates reacts with shock at the meaning behind her statement, and initially attempts to justify himself by saying that he had told her he loved her when he did it, but she replies that this didn't make it any different and leaves. Subsequently, Coates struggles to come to terms with the reality of his actions, and at one point lashes out at and then kicks Luschek out of his house for his less than caring attitude to Gina when she injures her hand. Eventually, he offers Tiffany an apology, and she decides at the cost of her friendship with Boo to accept, and to forgive him, and the two make amends. Later, while guarding the inmates following Poussey's death, he confesses to Tiffany that he is dissatisfied with his job and planning to quit. She attempts to talk him out of it, and kisses him, and though he returns the kiss, he stops himself from initiating sex with her, not wanting to make the mistake he made previously, and tells her that he will still go through with his plan to quit. When the riot breaks out, preventing him from leaving, Tiffany sees him creeping past the Commissary, where she and Boo have barricaded themselves, and he asks her not to tell anyone she saw him. She agrees and gives him a handful of Twizzlers, to Boo's annoyance. Over the next few episodes, Coates hides from the inmates in the rafters, while spying on Tiffany as she masturbates with her phone's vibration. When he is busted by Leanne and Angie while hiding in a tumble dryer following an interrupted tryst with Tiffany, she manages to get the gun that CO Humphrey smuggled in from Angie, which she gives to Coates. He accidentally shoots off Leanne's finger, but uses the gun to make a break for the exit, finally escaping and taking the weapon with him.

At the end of the season, he comes home to find Tiffany in his house, and nervously plays along as she gets him to join her watching TV.

In Season 6, Coates and Tiffany intend to go on a road trip together, but Officer Dixon invites himself along for the trip, forcing Tiffany to hide in the trunk of the car, though she later reveals herself. When Tiffany's absence is discovered, Coates plans to flee with her to Canada. However, Tiffany begins to worry about whether doing so would be in his best interests, while Coates continually tries to plead with her to come with him and to make the relationship work. In doing so, he inadvertently shows signs of his anger management problems and abusive personality, which he has been attempting to repress as a result of the realisation that he raped her. Eventually, Tiffany wakes up before Coates, gives him a goodbye kiss while he sleeps, and slips away to turn herself in, ensuring that his role in helping her escape is never discovered.

Baxter "Gerber" Bayley (played by Alan Aisenberg) – One of the new COs hired after MCC took over the prison. He is nicknamed "Gerber" by Alex upon first seeing him due to his young age. On one of his first days on the job, he overreacted when two inmates started arguing over an Uno game and pepper-sprayed them. He ends up accidentally spraying himself and Donaldson when Donaldson attempted to stop him. Piper enlists him into her used panty business, using him to sneak underwear out of the prison so that her brother Cal can sell them on the outside. Later on, he decides that he cannot smuggle underwear out of the prison anymore, which causes Piper to assume that he was waiting for an implied sexual favor from her, when it was actually due to stress. Intending to offer Bayley a handjob in exchange for his continued cooperation, Piper is interrupted by Stella, who convinces him to continue smuggling panties out of the prison for the bragging rights on the outside.

At the end of the third season, he is shown running for help when all of the inmates are leaving the prison to swim in the lake and most of the other guards have left for the strike.

During the fourth season, he expresses fear of the new guards and their methods. Flashbacks to his time before working at the prison revealed that he was once arrested for drinking and smoking marijuana on a water tower near the prison, and that he was fired from an ice cream shop for giving women he found attractive free ice cream. After telling Caputo about Humphrey forcing Suzanne and Maureen to fight, Caputo recommends that he considers quitting before working at the prison breaks him. Later, while attempting to help the guards quell an uprising in the cafeteria, Bayley gets involved in a scuffle with an unhinged and erratic Suzanne, and when Poussey gets involved, Bayley attempts to restrain her and accidentally traps her underneath the ruck, causing her to suffocate and die. While the inmates are put under lockdown, the traumatized and guilt-ridden Bayley is taken to a quiet corner of the prison with a blanket, and Caputo later gives him a Valium pill to help calm him. Later, while going to the bathroom, Piper finds the remorseful Bayley heading to Poussey's dorm to apologize to her friends, and convinces him that he is the last person they need to see at that moment. She pretends to agree to pass on a message from him, and he is then driven home by Officer Dixon.

Throughout season 5, Bayley wrestles with his guilt at killing Poussey and his family's indifference to his feelings, and makes numerous attempts to alleviate it. First, he attempts to hand himself in to the police, but is assumed to be a PTSD-suffering war veteran, and spends the night in the drunk tank. Next, he attempts suicide by consuming non-toxic paint from his father's workshop. In desperation, he makes the long journey to Poussey's father's house to beg for forgiveness in person. Major Washington is furious at Bayley over what he did, and bluntly says he will not do anything (forgive him, beat him up, or press charges for manslaughter) that will relieve the guilt Bayley is feeling, and that Bayley's punishment will be to live with his guilt for the rest of his life--a life that will be longer than the one he cut short. A tearful Bayley goes to a bar where he has a conversation with a sympathetic barman, who states that not everywhere is bad, before rattling off a list of places he would go, if he had the opportunity. Bayley initially approaches his bus terminal, but then decides not to use his ticket, and instead turns and goes back up the escalator, evidently deciding to leave his old life behind and start afresh somewhere new.

Danny Pearson (played by Mike Birbiglia) – The Director of Human Activities in the prison, which held most of the same responsibilities as the warden before MCC took over the prison. Pearson received the job due to his father's senior position at MCC and as a result had no real experience or qualifications for his job. One of his first acts was to force Caputo to rush the new hires on the job with inadequate training as a cost-saving measure.

Later on in the third season, he confronted his father about Sophia's situation after she was attacked and MCC ordered the prison to put her in the SHU due to her threat to sue. Disgusted with the company's actions, he quits his job, and Caputo is promoted into his former position as a result.

During the fourth season, he reappears during a prison show to protest MCC's treatment of the prisoners and to bring attention to their treatment of Sophia. He starts a website to show the corruption that MCC is involved with, to include posting a story stating that MCC bribed a judge to send more people to prison so that they could profit from their incarceration. He helps Crystal get Sophia out of the SHU by posting a picture of her smuggled out of the prison anonymously by Caputo.

Piscatella serves as the main antagonist of seasons 4 and 5. Piscatella responded when the other guards from Litchfield walked out, and his performance impressed Caputo enough to get him appointed as the new captain of the guards. Piscatella is shown to be very strict, brutal and overzealous with his methods, and becomes very unpopular with the inmates. He calls Piper into his office, and after encouraging her to create a task force to counter suspected gang activity in the prison, he makes it a point to inform her that he is a homosexual in order to discourage her from trying to flirt with him to get her way with him. When Aydin's body is found, he promptly disobeys Caputo's order not to interrogate any of the inmates until the FBI arrived, and took a blind eye to the abuses the other guards performed. When Caputo attempted to suspend Humphrey for forcing Suzanne and Maureen to fight, Piscatella threatened to pull all of the guards. When the inmates protested his actions in the cafeteria by standing on the tables, he ordered the guards to pull them down, which eventually resulted in Bayley accidentally killing Poussey of asphyxiation. Afterwards, Caputo angrily berates Piscatella for allowing an inmate to die on his watch, and for his flagrant disrespect when he notices that he is chewing gum in the presence of the body. When Piscatella gives his usual arrogant response, Caputo tells him that he has done some digging, and that he knows the real reason why he was removed from the men's prison he used to work at, before dismissing him for the weekend, threatening to expose him if he tries to pull his guards.

In season 5, upon learning that the prison has broken into a riot, Piscatella returns to the prison and insists that the riot can only be broken up with force, but is rebuffed and mocked by the CERT officers who are attempting to negotiate a peaceful end. Inside, Red digs through Caputo's files and learns the details of the incident that had caused him to be transferred, which is revealed by flashback. When he had first started out as a CO in a men's prison, Piscatella - then a naive, relatively gentle and happy-go-lucky young man, had developed romantic feelings for one of his inmates, Wes Driscoll, who had reciprocated. One day, Driscoll was violently beaten and raped by a group of inmates; his fate is not revealed. Piscatella realises that his relationship with Driscoll had been discovered when the leader of the attacking inmates, Miguel Resado, had walked in on them kissing in the kitchen. His grief and devastation at the attack quickly giving way to anger and a lust for vengeance, Piscatella had murdered Resado by handcuffing him under a shower, turning on the hot tap, and leaving Resado to be slowly and agonisingly boiled alive by the scalding water. In the present, upon realising that the inmates have taken CO Humphrey's phone and are trying to lure him into the prison, Piscatella loses patience and sneaks in with a gun, a knife and riot gear. After successfully kidnapping Blanca, Nicky, Boo, Alex and Piper and tying them up in a storage closet, he lures Red there, and proceeds to torture her, saying that he is doing so because of his belief that all inmates need to be broken. He is disturbed by the remainder of Red's crew, who were hiding in Frieda's hidden bunker in the prison's disused swimming pool, who knock him out with a poisoned dart Frieda had made. A video that Gina took of Piscatella torturing Red and breaking Alex's arm is then uploaded on YouTube, sparking protests outside the prison. Because of his size, Piscatella has to be restrained by a heavy board. Upon discovering him when seeking refuge for Suzanne in the bunker, an enraged Taystee grabs Piscatella's gun from Frieda, and puts it to his head. Piscatella manages to persuade her to put the gun down, revealing that killing Resado made him feel no better, and Red decides to release him, to show him that they are better than he thinks. Dumbfounded, Piscatella gives them a nod and leaves the bunker, only to be shot in the head and killed by one of the CERT officers, who did not recognise him in the smoke and darkness. After the CERT team covers up the accident to make it look like an inmate killed him, Taystee is subsequently charged with, and found guilty of his murder.

Thomas "Humps" Humphrey (played by Michael Torpey) – One of the new correctional officers hired under MCC's veterans program. A sadistic, mean-spirited bully, he enjoys playing pranks on and otherwise causing trouble with the inmates. After getting wind of Maria's smuggling operation (he can understand Spanish, and overheard a conversation between Maritza and the outside man), he starts paying more attention to Maritza, who was using the prison van for the smuggling operation. He overhears Maritza and Flaca talk about a scenario where they would have to choose between eating dead flies or a live baby mouse, and decides to take Maritza into his house and forces her to take part in a real life version of that choice at gunpoint. During the lockdown, after Aydin's remains are found, he is assigned guard duty over the inmates that are being interrogated. While in the waiting room, he pulls Kasey's chair from under her while she was sleeping, causing her to fall onto the floor. Then, as Suzanne laughs at her, he tries to goad Kasey into fighting her, before Maureen volunteers to fight Suzanne instead and ends up going to the hospital. He was almost suspended by Caputo for instigating the fight, but was saved when Piscatella threatened to pull all of the guards if he was suspended.

At the end of the season, he smuggles a gun into the prison, claiming that it was for protection after Poussey's death. When the inmates start rioting, he attempts to unholster his gun, and is pushed over by Maritza, resulting in his gun falling to the ground and being picked up by Daya. He attempts to negotiate with Daya in Spanish, but she shoots him in the leg and reminds him that she doesn't speak Spanish. Determined to prevent Daya from coming to further harm, Gloria, with the help of Pidge, takes Humphrey to Sophia's salon in the hope that her fire-fighter training will be enough. After stitching the wound, Humphrey is taken to the medical unit, where he is placed between Maureen and Suzanne. When he regains consciousness, he overhears them discussing ways to kill him, and starts telling them of the various ways that he could be killed, which holds their interest. However, he then suffers a violent stroke, and is rushed out of the facility. When alone, Maureen quietly reveals to Suzanne that the stroke had been caused by an air embolism which she herself induced by blowing oxygen bubbles into his IV tube. Humphrey initially survives the stroke, but is rendered mute and partially paralysed. He ultimately dies of his injuries, and his body is discovered abandoned by the CERT team in a broom closet when the prison is stormed in the series 5 finale. Daya subsequently accepts a plea deal for his murder in return for life imprisonment, rather than the death penalty.

Artesian McCullough (played by Emily Tarver) – A female correctional officer hired under MCC's veterans program. Despite her serious, laconic demeanor, she is considerably kinder and more compassionate than the other veterans. On several occasions, she looked on with disgust at the actions of the other guards against the inmates. She becomes friendly with Maritza, and during a shift change, she gives her some tampons. Later, they discussed Maritza giving her makeup tips. Following Maritza being forced to swallow a mouse by Humphrey, she sees her vomiting and becomes concerned about what may have happened between her and Humphrey, although she later decides to let the matter rest because she has no real idea or knowledge of what happened. When Aydin's remains were found, she offered to help question the inmates about his death, by using some of the extraction techniques she learned while in the military, before being told to stand down by Caputo.

At the end of the season, while she is escorting Judy out of the prison, she finds herself being surrounded by inmates reacting to the news about Bayley not being charged with Poussey's death. Following this, she is ordered to lay face down on the floor next to Humphrey by Daya, after Daya picks up the gun Humphrey smuggled into the prison. In season 5, she is one of the guards held hostage by the inmates. She is distraught when Maritza and Flaca make her remove her clothes alongside the other guards, having believed that she and Maritza's rapport would spare her this humiliation, though Maritza affectionately plays with her hair and tells her not to be ashamed of her body. Later, she is forced to role-play as an inmate by the African-American group as part of Suzanne's therapy. She is eventually released when Maria helps the guards escape.

In season 6, McCullough returns to work alongside Dixon, Blake and Luschek. Suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of her ordeal the previous season, she appears haunted and visibly depressed, and on several occasions is shown engaging in Self-harm by burning herself on the thighs with a cigarette. She shuns socialising with the other guards in favour of driving a Lyft on her own, but initially signs on to their "Fantasy Inmate" game. McCullough also appears to be constantly on edge, particularly around Maria Ruiz, her main tormentor - on one occasion, while tossing Maria's cell, her attitude accidentally triggers McCullough into slapping her across the face, an incident that leaves her visibly shaken. On another occasion, when McCullough stops kickball practice early, and the inmates advance on her in protest, she violently snaps, pulling out her nightstick and threateningly ordering them onto the ground, before other CO's step in and lead the inmates back to their cells. Later, in a conversation with her superior, McCullough opens up about her PTSD, admitting that, had she been armed, she would have been driven to shoot the inmates instead. At the end of the season, Maria attempts to persuade McCullough to make the captains to change teams and prevent a planned knife fight. After initial wariness, McCullough decides to trust her, and backs her up by ordering the change.

Lee Dixon (played by Mike Houston) – Another correctional officer hired under MCC's veterans program. Shown to be uncaring about the inmates, he loudly suggests to Coates that he should have sex with Maritza while she is driving them to their housing, only to find himself being insulted by her in return. He catches Piper attempting to feed Blanca while she is being forced to stand on the cafeteria table, and he orders her to stand next to her on the table as punishment. During the lockdown caused by the discovery of Aydin's remains, he is approached by Taystee, and after he asks her for the watch Caputo gave her, he dropped it to the floor and crushed it before giving it back. After Bayley accidentally kills Poussey, he was instructed to drive Bayley home. During the drive, in his attempt to console Bayley, he openly admitted to committing several war crimes during his service in Afghanistan he wasn't caught for, to include murdering civilians both in retaliation for the deaths of other troops at the hands of insurgents as well as to cover up other crimes. In the riot, he is stripped naked and violated with a baton by Maria Ruiz's gang, and held hostage alongside the other guards. Eventually, Maria helps him escape.

In season 6, he accompanies Charlie Coates on a road trip to the border with Canada, unaware that he is travelling with Tiffany. When she finally reveals her presence, he does not rat her out, but instead agrees to continue accompanying them. Later, he defends her and Charlie from two homophobic bullies at an amusement park (Tiffany was disguised as a man), and punches one of them in the face. He eventually leaves them when they see Tiffany's absence has been detected and advertised on the news, encouraging them to escape to Canada. He then returns to Litchfield to work in Max, and meets up with Tiffany when she returns to prison, having ditched Charlie.

Ryder Blake (played by Nick Dillenburg) – Another correctional officer hired under MCC's veterans program. Blake is one of the toughest COs due to his military training. His good looks often make the inmates flirt with him which he enjoys. However his good looks and strength just covers up for the fact that he is very gullible as he was persuaded by Frieda that her Darts contained Wolf bane which grew in the kitchen. He is quite religious, and was revealed to be Mormon when forced to strip to his temple garments during the riot.

B. Stratman (played by Evan Hall) – Another correctional officer hired under MCC's veterans program. Stratman could go from easygoing and fun, to brute and sadistic when angered. He holds his fellow COs in high regards and even covers for their inappropriate actions, believing them all to be part of a "brotherhood." He confronts Blanca, after complaining about how she smelled, and ordered her to bathe. After discovering that she still stunk in the cafeteria, he ordered her to stand on a table in the cafeteria, where she remained until the prison was put on lockdown after Aydin's remains were found. Following the takeover of the prison by the inmates, he is held hostage with the other guards and eventually is forced to perform in a talent show, in which he performed a stripshow to the delight of the inmates. Leanne attempts to take Stratman's finger to replace hers after part of her finger gets accidentally shot off by Coates. Prior to Leanne being able to take his finger, he offers to let her "try it out" first and fingers her, bringing her to orgasm. Later, he is able to flee from Leanne and Angie, and he escapes through an opening through the fence.

Erin Sikowitz (played by Eden Malyn) – A CO introduced during the third season after MCC takes over the prison, she is first seen participating in sexual harassment and self-defense training with the other new hires. Later, when Sophia is attacked in the prison salon, Sikowitz is the first CO on the scene. Due to her inexperience, she flees after telling Sophia that she was going to get Caputo, allowing Sophia's assault to continue. Despite demands from Sophia for Caputo to fire her, her job is spared.

During the first season, he seems to be the most ruthless of all the COs, and is seen sexually assaulting and humiliating the inmates at every opportunity. His personality can be both laughably exaggerated as well as frightening. Mendez uses his position as a guard to smuggle drugs and contraband into the prison until the prison begins to search the guards as well. He tries to strike a deal with Red to use her connections to smuggle drugs in, but she refuses until he puts more pressure on her. He often trades contraband for sexual favors with the inmates and is the one who supplies Tricia with the drugs that eventually kill her via an overdose. He covers up Tricia's death to make it look like a suicide. He is put on unpaid leave after he is caught having sex with Daya in a closet. Mendez is shown to be in love with Daya and often sends her love letters anonymously after he leaves Litchfield.

In the second season, Figueroa rehires Mendez to fill in for Fischer after she was fired and he immediately continues his arrogant and antagonizing demeanor toward the prisoners. When Bennett tells Caputo that Daya is pregnant, Caputo assumes Mendez is the father and uses it as an excuse to have him arrested in front of the inmates and reporters.

During the third season, Mendez is seen in a men's prison talking to his mother Delia about his love for Daya and how it is keeping him going in prison. She tells him that he isn't the father of Daya's unborn child, but he is in denial, stating that he knows that he is the father. Following this, Delia decides to drop the subject.

During the fifth season, Mendez is living with his mother while on probation. After Daya calls Delia to offer her the chance to adopt her child, Mendez realizes Daya is on the phone and begs his mother for a chance to talk to her. Delia reminds Mendez that talking to her would violate his probation and prevents him from doing so.

John Bennett (played by Matt McGorry) – A correction officer and a former soldier. He starts a secret friendship with Daya that eventually turns into a romantic relationship. He has an artificial leg, which Daya discovers before performing oral sex on him in a utility closet. Although the other inmates believe he lost his leg while in combat, he admits to Aleida and Daya that he lost his leg to an infection he got from a cut in a dirty hot tub. He eventually gets Daya pregnant, and he finds out that Daya seduced Mendez to have sex with her so Mendez can be blamed for the pregnancy.

During the second season, when Mendez is returned to the prison after his suspension for having sex with Daya, Bennett becomes outraged and uncharacteristically takes out his rage on Vee's gang. He then drags one of Daya's friends to the SHU when she tries to blackmail him. He attempts to continue his relationship with Daya in secret, but she believes that he should confess the relationship and serve time in prison for it, so that they may be together when they both complete their sentences. Regardless, the two share a number of romantic moments together, despite the situation. Eventually, he confesses to Caputo that he is the father of Daya's child. Caputo, not wanting another scandal two days into his trial period, tells him not to tell anybody else, or he will send Daya to max, where she may have to give birth in shackles.

During the third season, Caputo continues to berate him for getting Daya pregnant. Despite this, Bennett proposes to Daya and intends to marry her after she is released. However, he is shaken from his intentions after a visit with Cesar, during which Cesar reveals himself to be abusive and points a gun at his son during dinner. Cesar gives Bennett Daya's childhood crib, but later Bennett ends up abandoning the crib on the side of the road before driving off and moving away. In flashbacks to his deployment in Afghanistan, he befriended Farzad, a member of the Afghan National Police, while filming a humorous parody video of Hollaback Girl with his unit to pass time. Later, Farzad discovered that some of his colleagues were about to execute an insider attack on Bennett's unit. He rushed into Bennett's tent to warn him, only to be shot dead by another soldier after yelling "bomb" and being mistaken for an attacker. Following this, the real attackers throw a grenade in Bennett's tent and he is last shown lying in the corner while another soldier jumps on top of the grenade.

Natalie "Fig" Figueroa (played by Alysia Reiner) – The former corrupt executive assistant to the warden. Figueroa claims to be a women's advocate for the prisoners, but is generally unconcerned with them and refuses to get involved in their problems. Arrogant and condescending, she puts on a tough facade to disguise her own insecurities and somewhat fragile personality. Sometimes, she shows odd displays of humanity and sensitivity, usually when the rest of the prison staff are being insufferable. Figueroa tries to avoid any scandals or media attention about goings-on at the prison, and her desire to cover up incidents allows Mendez to get away with his schemes, although it later works in favor of the inmates. She is revealed to have been embezzling funds from the prison's budget for her husband's state senate campaign, a secret which is in danger of being exposed due to the publicity the prison is getting from Larry's articles and radio interview.

She spends the second season a step ahead of Larry and a reporter's hunt, focusing on her husband's campaign to become state senator and on getting pregnant.

She is shown to be particularly uncaring during the second season, brought on by the stress of keeping the embezzlement under wraps, and her marriage is generally loveless and lacking physical affection. She is devastated and heartbroken when she sees her husband kissing his male campaign manager, and she is taken completely by surprise that her husband is a closet homosexual. Shortly after, Caputo confronts her with evidence of her embezzlement. She performs oral sex on him in an attempt to buy his silence, only to find out afterward that Caputo has already given copies of the evidence to the warden. Figueroa manages to avoid being fired or charged, resigning with a commendation for her services by the warden because he didn't want a scandal from the embezzlement and didn't want to make a political enemy of her husband.

During the third season, she helps Caputo by giving him information on a private contractor that would take over the prison when it is being threatened with being closed down. She also begins an affair with him.

Near the end of the fourth season, she speaks to Caputo, and ends up letting him know that MCC is planning to put even more inmates into the prison after building a new facility to house them. Fig also appears at length as a negotiator for MCC during the riot at Litchfield, where she often is out-matched on facts by Taystee and has a frosty reunion with Caputo. While she is receptive to most of the prisoners' demands, she ends any possibility of making a deal when she hears that CO Humphrey is dead (ironically, Humps wasn't actually dead at this point, but he died not long afterwards as a result of an inmate-caused stroke).

Susan Fischer (played by Lauren Lapkus) – A rookie prison guard, Fischer used to bag groceries at a shop that Piper frequented in college, and recalls how Piper used to be a difficult customer. However, she is friendly toward Piper, informing her that she does not think any less of her for being in prison, since the only difference between them is that Fischer didn't get caught making mistakes. Piper appreciates her kind words and convinces her to suggest the reopening of the prison track. She displays a perpetually naive and cheerful demeanor, which endears some (especially Caputo) and irritates others. She struggles to come across as authoritative and strict, and her attempts to appear tough do not appear to intimidate any of the inmates in the slightest, on occasion, they even admonish Susan in return.

Caputo seems to have a romantic interest in her, but it is revealed in the first-season finale that Susan has a boyfriend.

In the second season, Nicky, while having a competition with Boo, begins hitting on her. Susan is initially oblivious, believing Nicky is just being friendly, until she makes her move and directly offers to have sex with her. Caught completely by surprise, she angrily brushes her off. Caputo, meanwhile, tries repeatedly to impress her with things like his hobby of playing in a band, but when he realizes she will never return his feelings, he gives up, and when Susan lashes out at him for enforcing Figueroa's harsh measures, he fires her in frustration. Before she leaves, she finds Nicky smoking in the chapel, but declines to admonish her since she was already fired. Seeing she is upset, Nicky offers her sympathy, and she jokes that she did consider her suggestion to have sex, before ultimately deciding against it. Nicky, in turn, advises her that getting fired may be the best thing that happened to her, since being a prison guard did not suit her. The two part on good terms.

Scott O'Neill (played by Joel Marsh Garland) – An overweight and generally good-natured prison guard in a relationship with Wanda Bell. He is frequently shown eating, despite claiming to be on different fad diets.

During the second-season finale, he is assigned to watch a group of nuns protesting outside the gate and taunts them with songs and insults about his own unhappy Catholic-school upbringing.

In the third season, he gets into a verbal confrontation with Coates in his donuts shop after being offered red velvet donuts. Later, he becomes upset when he sees that Coates is applying to work at the prison.

At the end of the third season, he was one of the guards that walked out after Caputo shut down the guard's union.

During the fourth season, Donaldson mentions him when confronting Caputo at a restaurant, telling him that he heard O'Neill failed to seek treatment for kidney stones due to not having health insurance and is on dialysis as a result, with the possibility of losing a kidney.

Wanda Bell (played by Catherine Curtin) – A prison guard in a relationship with O'Neill, Bell is gruff, apathetic, and has little patience for inmates who waste her time, are unreasonable, or annoy her. Nonetheless, she tends to be the most professional of the guards and takes her work seriously, especially the occasional visits from the Scared Straight program. During these visits, she displays a much deeper insight into individual inmates' histories and personalities than the other guards. For example, she specifically requests Tricia and later Piper to scare an unusually resistant, wheelchair-bound delinquent adolescent, aware that their more philosophical natures will be more effective in reaching the girl.

At the end of the third season, she walks out of the prison along with the other guards protesting Caputo's attempt to shut down their union.

Eliqua Maxwell (played by Lolita Foster) – The first guard Piper meets when she arrives at the prison in the first season. She was on duty as the receptionist for new prisoners turning themselves in. She was one of the COs that subdued Miss Claudette when she was choking Fischer.

At the end of the third season, she was one of the guards that walked out on Caputo when he attempted to shut down the guard's union created in response to the benefits that were cut when MCC took over the prison.

Charles Ford (played by Germar Terrell Gardner) – One of the COs at the prison. He was shown escorting Miss Rosa to one of her chemotherapy appointments and he escorted Christopher out of the visitor's room after he began to yell at Lorna during a visit.

During the third season, he was one of the COs that confronted Caputo about the reduced benefits and hours the other guards were getting when MCC took over the prison. When Caputo was promoted to replace Pearson when he quit, he was the first CO to walk out when Caputo tried to shut down their union.

Wade Donaldson (played by Brendan Burke) – A somewhat cranky and curmudgeonly guard who is perpetually worn-out by the antics of the inmates that he has to deal with. Nevertheless, he is surprisingly compassionate and good at dealing with difficult situations - on one occasion, he manages to help Daya recover from a panic attack almost immediately after discovering that she is having one, despite Bennett having spent ages trying to calm her.

In the third season, he was assigned to help train new guard Baxter Bayley on the job when Pearson orders Caputo to cut their mandatory 40 hours of training short and ends up accidentally being pepper-sprayed when Bayley overreacts to a confrontation between two inmates. Later, he becomes embarrassed at the discovery that he is the basis for one of the characters in Suzanne's erotic tales.

At the end of the season, he joins most of the other veteran guards by going on strike when Caputo shuts down the newly organized staff union.

During the fourth season, he is seen working as a busboy at a restaurant Caputo and Linda visited. After Caputo tried to give him an anonymous tip, he confronted him, claimed that he was working three jobs, and told him he didn't want his money, only for Caputo to scold him and state that the walkout put the town in danger.

Berdie Rogers (played by Marsha Stephanie Blake) – A prison counselor introduced in the third season. She takes a different approach than Healy in counseling troubled inmates and starts a drama class, which causes friction between her and Healy. She tells Alex that she wants to make a difference in the prison system, which Alex considers noble but futile. During drama class, Rogers pairs Alex and Piper together to perform an improv in a grocery store and the scene ends up causing them to release some of their tensions they were holding in. She also helps Brook and encourages her not to take antidepressants that were prescribed to her by Healy. She encourages Suzanne to write stories, which results in her creating erotic stories based on Donaldson that circulated around the prison. Caputo finds out about Suzanne's stories and puts Rogers on probation, which eventually turns into an indefinite suspension.

Aydin Bayat (played by Juri Henley-Cohn) – One of Kubra Balik's enforcers. He is first seen in flashbacks featuring Alex in a nightclub. Later, he is seen killing Fahri, another one of Kubra's employees in his drug cartel, for allowing a professional working for Kubra to get arrested in Paris after failing to pick her up from the airport. Following Alex's return to Litchfield after her parole violation, Aydin applies for a job at Litchfield as a CO in order to get closer to her. Aydin confronts Alex alone in the prison greenhouse and attempts to choke her to death, under orders from Kubra to punish her for her testimony at his trial in Chicago, but is knocked unconscious by Lolly. Later that night, he is smothered to death by Alex after she finds him still breathing and his remains are buried in the prison garden the following morning.

Polly Harper (played by Maria Dizzia) – Piper's best friend of many years on the outside. Polly and Piper started a business together, which Polly ran while Piper was in prison. Polly is pregnant at the beginning of the series and is upset at Piper for getting herself locked up. She begins cutting Piper out of their business after Piper misses a conference call they were supposed to make together. Flashbacks reveal that Polly was supportive of Piper exploring her sexuality, but disliked Alex and found Piper's taste in romantic partners of either sex horrendous. After Piper and Larry's break-up, she is seen to spend more and more time with Larry, as her husband Pete leaves her alone with her newborn. She eventually begins an affair with Larry, and she leaves Pete for Larry.

Pete Harper (played by Nick Stevenson) – Polly's Australian husband and a friend of Larry and Piper. A running gag is that most characters dislike him to varying degrees and are confused about why Polly married him. He is seen to be somewhat annoying, selfish, and flighty, especially when he leaves on a trip of self-discovery shortly after his son was born. He also has a macho streak, shown when he punches Larry for having sex with Polly. Soon afterward, he leaves Polly, who states that Pete is happy to be relieved of the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.

Carol Chapman and Bill Chapman (played by Deborah Rush and Bill Hoag) – Piper's affluent, appearance-conscious parents. Carol, catty and seemingly humorless, doesn't seem as supportive as Piper thinks she should be, and their visitations are usually awkward. She is rather formal and conventional, treating Piper's prison stay as a shame upon the family (and herself). On the other hand, Bill is outwardly supportive of his daughter but causes a rift with Piper when he refuses to visit her in prison, because "he doesn't want to see his daughter that way".

In the third season, it is revealed that Bill had an affair with another woman during Piper's childhood, but the family glossed it over and he remained married to Carol.

Cal Chapman and Neri Chapman (played by Michael Chernus and Tracee Chimo) – Piper's younger brother and sister-in-law. Piper and Cal's parents long favored the high-achieving Piper and let Cal become a sarcastic, underachieving slacker. Since Piper's incarceration, their parents have begun expecting more of him, much to his dismay. Cal is friends with Larry, who often visits him at his trailer in the middle of nowhere, which he eventually shares with his hippie girlfriend (and later wife) Neri. In addition, after falling out with her parents, Cal becomes Piper's only point of contact with her family.

In the second season, he and Neri marry at his grandmother's funeral.

In the third season, Cal agrees to help Piper with her used panty business as her partner on the outside. Later, he admits to her that Neri is trying to make extra money by selling knock-off panties using a solution to simulate the odor along with the ones coming from the prison, which causes Piper to become upset and claim that his wife is "diluting" the brand.

During the fourth season, Cal tells Piper that Neri is pregnant and that he started a new business to supplement their income after Piper's used panty business fell through.

In the sixth season, Cal arrives at Litchfield to pick Piper up following her early release.

Howard Bloom and Amy Kanter-Bloom (played by Todd Susman and Kathryn Kates) – Larry's parents. Though he is her lawyer, Larry's dad dislikes Piper and feels that Larry is making a mistake by being with her. They own the home where Larry is living, and let him slide on the rent. Howard wants Larry to find a real job and encourages him to lie to Piper about who really named her in her criminal case.

In the second season, Howard advises Piper to tell the truth about the kingpin in her and Alex's case, but she does not heed his advice, and instead lies for Alex.

Crystal Burset (played by Tanya Wright) – Sophia's wife Crystal was supportive of Sophia's transition and even helped her find her feet as a woman, but attempted to persuade her not to have gender confirmation surgery. Ultimately, Crystal felt it was better that her son have a father who was there for him, even if it was in a dress. She sometimes visits Sophia in prison and updates her on their son. Crystal refuses to smuggle in hormones for Sophia when the prison cuts her dosage. Later on, Crystal becomes close to the new pastor of her church, sparking Sophia's jealousy. Sister Ingalls convinces her that this is about Crystal's needs and not about Sophia or their son, and Sophia eventually gives her blessing for Crystal to act on her interest.

During the third season, she agrees to allow Gloria's son to ride with her for their weekly visits with Sophia but she ends this practice after it appears that Gloria's son is a bad influence to her son.

During the fourth season, she repeatedly seeks out Caputo, in an attempt to find out what is going on with Sophia after all communication is cut off when she is sent to the SHU. She confronts Caputo on his property, and eventually forced off at gunpoint by his girlfriend and MCC employee Linda. After Danny received a photo of Sophia in the SHU, she appeared with him at MCC headquarters and used copies of the photo to force the company to release Sophia from the SHU.

In season 6, Crystal and her son collect Sophia from Litchfield when she is released early.

James Washington (played by Thaddeus Daniels) – A general officer in the United States Army, and Poussey's father. In flashbacks, he is a major stationed at United States Army Garrison Hohenfels, Germany with Poussey, and working under German officer Jürgen Mertensacker. Poussey falls in love with Mertensacker's daughter Franziska, and shortly after Mertensacker discovers their relationship, Washington receives orders to leave Germany. Prior to their departure, he prevents Poussey from pulling a gun on Mertensacker, before defending her sexuality to him.

In the present, he is seen visiting Poussey in uniform in the visitor's center during the first season, and he receives a phone call from Caputo at the end of the fourth season informing him of Poussey's death before Caputo goes on the air to read his prepared statement from MCC. A few days later, he receives a visit from a remorseful Bayley, but he tells Bayley that he will not do anything to help him address his guilt, and that he hopes he never has a day of peace again.

Jürgen Mertensacker (played by Stephan Lee Anderson) – A Oberstleutnant in the German Army, who was James Washington's superior officer while he was stationed in Germany, and the father of Poussey's German girlfriend Franziska. He is shown to be homophobic, and it is heavily implied that he was involved in getting Poussey's father reassigned out of Germany after her relationship with his daughter was discovered. Prior to their departure, he ends up engaging in a verbal altercation with Poussey over her father being reassigned, where she tries to pull a gun on him but is stopped by her father before the gun is visible. Following this, he recommends conversion therapy for Poussey to her father, but he defends her sexuality and says that there is nothing wrong with her.

Franziska Mertensacker (played by Nina Rausch) – Jürgen Mertensacker's daughter, and Poussey's girlfriend while her father was stationed in Germany. She is first seen at a party having a rolling paper competition with Poussey, before becoming affectionate with her after losing. Later on, she is having sex with Poussey in her room before being caught by her father, who walked in on them in the middle of the act. Following this, she becomes upset when Poussey's father was reassigned outside of Germany, and begs to go with them. Poussey initially pushes back and claims that their relationship was just casual, but she later admits to her father while drunk that she loves her.

Cesar Velazquez (played by Berto Colon) – Aleida Diaz's boyfriend and a drug dealer. He is shown using Diaz's kitchen to cut/package drugs for sale. Aleida admits that she is in prison for taking the rap for him, and sometime after she was arrested Daya started sleeping with him. Despite this, it is clear he cares deeply for Daya and Aleida.

In the first season, after Aleida contacts him about Daya's pregnancy, he immediately comes upstate, turns up unexpectedly at Bennet's house and vets him for fatherhood, warning him that he will need a larger house with more room, and to start saving his money.

In the third season, he invites Bennett to his house for dinner and shows him his new girlfriend Margarita and his baby with her. He then gives Bennett a crib for his unborn child with Daya, which Bennett ends up abandoning on the side of the road. Several weeks after Bennett disappears, Cesar breaks into his house to look for him and he promises Daya that he will kill him if he ever sees him again. After Daya gives birth, he takes custody of her child, but the child is taken by Child Protective Services after the DEA raids his house.

During the fourth season, it is revealed that he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Margarita (played by Karina Ortiz) – Cesar's girlfriend and the mother of his youngest daughter. She is first seen when Bennett comes to visit Cesar, and Bennett is instructed not to mention her to Aleida or Daya.

She is present when Cesar's house is raided by the DEA at the end of season three.

During the fourth season, she picks up Aleida from prison when she was released on parole, and took her out to a restaurant before telling her that Cesar got her pregnant. She got into an argument with Aleida in a clothing store after she admitted that she wasn't going to stay faithful to Cesar while he was in prison.

Despite the argument, she ends up allowing Aleida to stay with her, and at the end of the fourth season she is watching Caputo's announcement of Poussey's death with her.

Jean Baptiste (played by James McDaniel) – Jean originally brought Miss Claudette to the U.S. and set her up at the cleaning company. He later broke her heart by marrying another woman but briefly reconnected with Miss Claudette after his wife's death.

Delia Mendez Powell (played by Mary Steenburgen) – Mendez's mother. She comes to the prison at the request of Aleida to discuss Daya's child under the assumption that she is the child's paternal grandmother. She plans to adopt the baby after she is born and mentions that Mendez was the "bad" child, with her other two sons growing up to be a dentist and an art historian. Eventually, Daya tells Delia that Mendez isn't the baby's father, but that she still wants to give the baby up for adoption. Delia tries to tell her son during a prison visit, but he is immediately in denial, refusing to accept the fact that he wasn't the father of Daya's child. Shortly after the baby is born, Aleida calls her and tells her that the baby died during childbirth, although this was a ruse in order to give the baby to Cesar instead.

During the fifth season, her son is living with her while he is out on parole. Prior to Daya surrendering for shooting Humphrey, she calls Delia and tells her that her child is alive and well, but she needs a good family to stay with. Daya once again offers her the chance to adopt her child, and Delia tells her that she will do so.

Vincent "Vince" Muccio (played by John Magaro) – Lorna's pen pal and later husband. During their first encounter, Lorna confuses details about Vince with some of the other men she was writing, causing an awkward situation before Vince states that he is okay with her writing other men. As the two come closer, Lorna tells him about her former obsession Christopher, causing Vince to take some of his friends to his house to teach him a lesson. Vince comes to the prison intending to break up with Lorna and she proposes in response, which he accepts. The two get married in the prison's visiting center and have sex for the first time on a vending machine while Officer Bell is standing guard in the other room.

During the fourth season, he admits to Lorna that he still lives with his parents. He starts to communicate with Lorna less frequently, sometimes going several weeks without visiting. Eventually, he finds himself being accused of cheating due to his lack of communication with Lorna.

When Lorna initially tells him she's pregnant during season 5, he deserts her because he thinks she's crazy. Eventually, he receives a call from Nichols, who confirms that Lorna really is pregnant, which prompts him to return to her.

In the second season, he was in Chicago on trial, and despite Alex testifying against him he was set free. After gaining his freedom, it was presumed that he would seek revenge on Alex for her testimony.

In the third season, it was shown that he sent Aydin into the prison as a CO in order to punish her, and is led to believe that Alex is dead when he received posed pictures of her feigning death after Aydin is knocked unconscious at the beginning of the fourth season.

Fahri (played by Sebastian LaCause) – One of Kubra Balik's employees. Fahri first meets Alex shortly after she meets with her father and he ends up introducing her to Kubra's drug cartel.

During the third season, he offers Alex a ride after she attended her mother's funeral, later telling her that Kubra sent him to the U.S. to look for more business. In Paris, Fahri was supposed to pick up a professional at the airport, but Alex convinces him to stay at a nightclub with her instead. Later, he finds out that the professional was arrested and he becomes fearful of Kubra's retaliation for the arrest. While in a hotel room with Alex and Aydin, he is shot to death by Aydin after Aydin received orders from Kubra to kill him from an hotel employee. Kubra later reveals to Alex that he did not kill Fahri solely for his mistake at the airport, which was merely his tipping point, but because he was becoming careless, lazy and a liability.

Linda Ferguson (played by Beth Dover) – An MCC employee that works in purchasing. During a meeting at MCC, she agrees with Caputo's suggestion of using veterans to replenish the shortage of guards because of the tax breaks the company would receive. She starts a relationship with Caputo, and frequently showed him that she is more concerned with financial breaks she can get for the company than the welfare of the prisoners, and later admits that she never stepped foot in a prison. During a night at Caputo's house, when Crystal came over to ask about Sophia's well-being, she forced her off of Caputo's property at gunpoint.

At the end of the fourth season, she visits the prison for the first time when Caputo is about to do the press release announcing Poussey's death, and she is in the bathroom when the women start rioting.

At the beginning of the fifth season, she becomes trapped in the prison with the rioting inmates that have taken the guards hostage. Piper and Alex find her and help her pose as a white-collar criminal to blend in. She becomes attached to Big Boo both as a love interest and for protection. During flashbacks, Linda was being hazed while trying to join a sorority by the sorority leader Meg. Later, during a party, Linda is outside with an intoxicated Meg while she is attempting to use the bathroom in freezing temperatures and decides to leave her alone. The following morning, Meg is found frozen to death, and after Linda lies about being the last person to see her alive, she takes over as leader of the sorority. Back in the prison, while sharing an intimate moment with Big Boo, she looks through Linda's phone and discovers pictures of her and Caputo. After a failed attempt to extort $5,000 from Linda for her silence, Big Boo outs her as not being an inmate and instead being the MCC employee responsible for their substandard living conditions for the purpose of budget cuts, resulting in the other prisoners throwing several objects at her. After the CERT officers breached the prison and bought the inmates outside, she attempted to announce herself as an undercover MCC employee. However, Big Boo immediately led other inmates into claiming to be MCC employees as well, resulting in Linda's declaration being dismissed as false. Following this, she is forced to board a bus with the other inmates.

Grace Warren (played by Sarah Rish) – Suzanne's adoptive sister, and the biological daughter of Suzanne's adoptive parents. She was born when Suzanne was five years old, and is shown allowing her to participate in parties with her friends. When Grace is 23, she lives with her boyfriend Brad and Suzanne, and always spends the weekends home with her due to Suzanne being afraid to be home alone. She is happy when she hears that Suzanne was named employee of the month at her job, and then lets her know that she and Brad decided to spend a weekend away. After reassuring her that she would be fine and giving Suzanne a list of things to do while they are gone, they leave for the weekend, not knowing what Suzanne would eventually end up doing while she was gone.

Wes Driscoll (played by Charlie Barnett) was an inmate at the unidentified prison where Piscatella was employed at the start of his career. While searching through Piscatella's office, Red finds his inmate name tag, and wonders who he is. In flashbacks, it is revealed that, after some initial flirtation, he and Piscatella began a secret relationship over some time. The two reportedly even got their initials tattooed on their wrists. However, after being witnessed in the middle of a private tryst, Wes was brutally beaten and raped by a group of inmates. Piscatella managed to fight them off, but it is left unclear whether Wes survived the attack. In his anger, Piscatella later murdered the leader of the group that attacked him, Miguel Resado.

Miguel Resado (played by Marcos Palma) was another inmate at Piscatella's first prison. After finding Piscatella's file in Caputo's office, Flores discovers a report detailing how an inmate named Resado had been found unresponsive in the showers with 3rd degree burns on 80% of his body, while on Piscatella's watch. A shocked Red realises that Piscatella almost certainly killed him. In flashbacks, it is revealed that Resado was an inmate who. while assigned to the kitchen, accidentally walked in on Piscatella kissing Wes Driscoll, his secret lover. Subsequently, Resado had led a gang of other inmates in a brutal attack and gang rape of Driscoll. Enraged and vengeful, Piscatella had chained Resado under a shower and turned the hot water on full. When another guard starts to express concern at the sound of Resado's agonized screams, Piscatella coldly denies being able to hear anything, and proceeds to stand guard as the flailing and screaming Resado is slowly boiled alive.

The manner and circumstances of Resado's death, and its aftermath, are likely a reference to the death of Darren Rainey.

Main Officer Herrmann (played by Jason Altman) is the leader of the CERT team that storms Litchfield after the riot in season 5. In season 6, Herrmann alters the crime scene of Piscatella's death to frame Taystee. When confronted by Caputo after the trial when Taystee is found guilty, he beats him up and escapes.[6]